QotD: Tasting Wines

We can detect over 10,000 different components in vinifera wines, which is a lucky break for wine critics who would get pretty bored writing, "tastes like wine," over and over again. Many of these chemicals have lock-and-key connections in our brain which work something like this: imagine the smell of Sunkist as a key that fits into a lock in your brain, causing you to think, "Orange!" Now, Vinifera takes a counterfeit key and sticks it in the same slot, causing you to say, "Hints of pungent orange peel tiptoe bracingly across the midpalate," while your brain thinks, "Orange!" It also has the key to sauerkraut, filter pad and diesel, according to the official Wine Aroma Wheel.

Jennifer Chotzi Rosen, "After the Fox", Rocky Mountain News, 2002-07-27